


Lost Boy

by TheWalkingGrimes



Series: Tales of District Four [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, enjoy some Mags and Finnick backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: Mags knows better than to get attached.
Relationships: Mags & Finnick Odair
Series: Tales of District Four [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018845
Kudos: 36





	Lost Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I changed the summary from what it was originally. I’ve decided to save that summary for a different fic that I currently have planned.

“Hey lady, do you need any help with that?”

Mags looks over her load to see a pair of wide, innocent green eyes staring back at her. 

Too wide.  _ Too _ innocent.

She shifts her bags in her hands and gives the boy a flat look. “I don’t have any pocket money on me,” Mags tells him, hoping that will shoo him away. 

It’s not that she doesn’t give away her fair share of change, she has more than enough, but these boys at the docks are like seagulls - you toss them one piece of bread a single time, and suddenly you can’t go more than two steps without being swarmed.

Besides, she recognizes this boy. He’s one of the younger kids at the Complex, and even though Mags makes a point of only teaching the older students (it’s easier not to get overly attached when she hasn’t known them from a young age), she’s seen him around. Money and food given to trainees is strictly regulated and the punishments for trying to circumvent that system is severe.

Just because Mags invented the system does not mean she’s above it.

“That’s okay!” The boy tells her brightly. He’s thin and gangly, but there’s a healthy fullness to his cheeks and glint in his eye that tells her he isn’t starving. She wonders how many ‘gifts’ he takes home from the Complex. “I don’t need anything, I just wanted to help.”

Mags squints at him suspiciously. “And what would motivate you to do that,  _ hijo?” _

“Good parenting.”

His quick comeback surprises her, because it’s a bit too clever for his age. Mags wonders if it’s a joke thrown around in his household he’s simply parroting back to her. 

Either way, she’s amused and she offloads two of the lighter bags to him. He takes them easily and reaches for another.

She hands him her heaviest bag and hides her amusement when he nearly drops it, then pretends he isn’t struggling with it the entire walk back to Victor’s Isle.

As they walk under the archway, his eyes dart around to all the tall windows and bright lights of the beautiful houses, and Mags thinks she understands a little bit more why he wanted to escort her home.

He helps unload her food from the market and while he doesn’t touch anything else, she watches his eyes continue to take everything in, from the Capitol-grade refrigerator to the set of fine china in the cupboard. 

“Do you really have this whole house all to yourself?” He asks her curiously. Mags can easily picture him sharing a tiny room with multiple siblings, maybe even a bed. 

She nods.

“Doesn’t it get lonely?”

It’s one of those perfectly honest and innocent questions that only children can ask, piercing right to the heart of Mags’s empty world. She sees herself coming home three years ago, calling out for her love to no response, coming up the stairs and screaming as she sees Cara laying in bed with blood on her chin, head lolled to the side.

Ironic, really, that after all those years of being terrified the Capitol would tear them apart, it was a pulmonary embolism that brought it all to an end. 

Except, it wasn’t the end. Because Mags is still here, living in the after. 

There has to be a reason. She just hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

“I like the peace.” Mags tells the boy. “I can get a lot of reading done.” 

His eyes light up. “I love reading! What kind of books do you read?”

She shows him the library and impossibly, his eyes get even bigger.

“I’ve never seen so many books before.” His fingers twitch toward them, like he wants to run his fingers along the spines. “Not even in the school library.”

“Here.” She pulls out an old classic - it’s probably worth more than her fancy refrigerator, but the boy doesn’t need to know that - and hands it to him. “Peter Pan. You can take it with you.”

_ “Really?”  _ He takes the book from her, and she’s pleased to see that he handles it with more reverence and care than she would’ve expected from a child of his age. “Thank you.”

The good parenting line may have been a joke, but Mags suspects that it’s an apt one. 

“If you give it back when you finish it, I can give you another one.” Mags tells him, mostly because she doesn’t want him to try selling it and potentially get in trouble with the Complex - or worse, Peacekeepers. “Think of it like a library.” 

“Thank you, Mrs. Cohen.”

“Mags.” She corrects him, and doesn’t ask his name. 

It’s not like she’s planning on getting attached.

  
  


* * *

“I’m going to drop out.”

“You stop that now.” Mags scolds, eyes flicking at the walls. Once upon a time Beetee gave her a device that could test for active bugs, but it stopped working years ago and they did mandatory renovations on all the Victors’ houses about five years back. She can’t trust her own home anymore. 

“I am,” insists Finnick, arms crossed, the very visage of teenage rebellion. “I’m going to drop out and get a proper job so I can save up for the medication.”

He could work from dawn to dusk every day until he was sixty years old and it would still not be enough for the necessary medicine for his mother’s damaged lungs. Mags knows this and she thinks Finnick probably does too, he’s just too grief-stricken to think clearly now.

_ (For a moment, she sees little Adelaide Odair screaming “Again, again!” before a laughing Finnick dunks her in the waves once more and she squeals in delight, and Mags thinks she knows how Cara must’ve felt when that clot hit her lungs.) _

Mags shakes the memory off and focuses on the crisis at hand. “You are  _ not.  _ You are going to go home and get some sleep and when your head is clear you’re going to come back to training like you are  _ obligated  _ to do.”

“I can’t waste my time there anymore,” snaps Finnick. “Bringing scraps home, for just the  _ chance  _ that I might be able to volunteer when I’m eighteen?”

_ “Hijo,  _ it is more than a chance and you know it.” 

She hadn’t known, back when he was just a bright-eyed boy coming by her house to trade out books, and eventually to trade stories and drink tea with her. It wasn’t terribly often, because he was a child with responsibilities and when he wasn’t training he was spending his time with people his own age rather than keeping a lonely old woman company. But it was often enough that Mags began to look forward to his visits.

She told herself that she wasn’t getting attached, even as she learned his name, and the names of his mother and his siblings and eventually about his deceased father. This sweet child would be weeded out of the program, as all children like him were.

Then one day she’d walked into an upper-level survival skills class and found his mischievous face smiling back at her. 

_ He’s gifted,  _ the mid-level trainer had explained to her when Mags asked what the hell an eleven-year-old was doing in her class.  _ The more we push him now, the better prepared he’ll be when the time comes. _

And Mags had realized what a mistake she’d made.

“You cannot fail out.” She tells him through gritted teeth, as lowly as she can. “That is not an option for you anymore, and you know that. You are going into that arena.”

“What’s the point if my entire family is dead by the time I get there?”

He sounds so broken, too broken for a child of his age and in that moment Mags knows that if she could, she would buy the medicine for him. Even though there would be talk and people would be angry about the favoritism, she would ignore all of it to help him. 

Unfortunately, life is not fair and things are not that simple. She’s not allowed to make such an expensive purchase for someone outside of her household, and any attempt to circumvent the system will bring about swift retribution - and not on her.

It’s an arena none of them will ever escape.

“There are other treatments that can help your mother hold on.” Mags suggests, even though she knows it is likely futile. “She may be able to make it a few more years, until you’re ready to volunteer. That is your only option,  _ hijo.” _

She won’t say, and neither will he, that even if he dies his family will still receive money from the complex for his sacrifice. While it won’t be enough to cover the cost of the medication, it will help.

But an idea is forming behind his eyes. A dangerous one. 

“Okay,” He echoes, and it’s clear that his thoughts are a million miles away right now. “Until I’m ready to volunteer.”

* * *

The next time there’s a tournament with the sixteen-to-eighteen year old group, Mags isn’t really shocked to see that Finnick has talked his way into it.

Aggravated, but not shocked.

Their current top contender for this year is Cedric, a burly seventeen year old who laughs when Finnick steps into the ring with him for the finale. 

“Aww, c’mon, and here I thought I was gonna have some fun.” Cedric sneers, tightening his grip on his blunted sword. He’s a nice boy who calls Mags “Ma’am” and helps his father at their store on days he has off. In the walls of the Complex, all that melts away. “You’re not worried I’m gonna mess up your pretty face?”

Finnick smiles back. “Not particularly.”

The fight is bloody and brutal and while Cedric does give Finnick a few nasty welts and a twisted ankle, he does not mess up his face. Not for lack of trying.

Finnick, meanwhile, breaks Cedric’s nose.

While Cedric is distracted by the pain, Finnick pushes him down and smears the blood in Cedric’s eyes, blinding him. He takes one of the fake knives and slides it across Cedric’s throat, where it leaves a red line from the force of the pressure.

As Cedric is pulled off to the medical bay, the trainers gather.

“He wants to go  _ in?”  _ Meri questions, shaking her head. “He must be nuts. He’s too young.”

“He’s big for his age, he looks older.” Disagrees Langford. He’s a retired Peacekeeper, not a Victor, and knows the Capitol probably better than any of them. “He’s a good competitor. They’ll love him, you know they will.”

Meri starts to say something, but she’s cut off by the rising speculation among the other Trainers, about the publicity that having such a young volunteer would bring, the sponsorship money they could pull in with a bid at the record, money that could benefit  _ both  _ Tributes, including a potentially fully trained female Tribute who may have a better shot.

“And of course,” Eldoris adds with a chuckle. “There  _ is  _ that face.”

Meri makes an angry noise, a bit like a cat, and shakes her head again. “Mags, you can’t be okay with this.”

Mags thinks about the little boy whose eyes glittered with wonder as she handed him an old book. She looks over at the blood covered boy, now disturbingly docile as he lets the medical team wrap his ankle, and tries to reconcile the two images in her mind.

And she realizes she doesn’t know what she’s more afraid of: what will happen to Finnick if they let him go into the arena, or what will happen if they  _ don’t. _

“If we let him go in, I’ll be his mentor.” She tells them, with all the authority that she knows she still holds over them. As the oldest Victor and the founder of the Complex, she is the only one with the power to veto a potential tribute. “That’s my only condition.”

_ “Mags-”  _ Meri protests, while the rest of them agree swiftly.

“Then he has my recommendation.” 

* * *

The next time Finnick comes by her house, Mags doesn’t give him a book.

Instead she tosses him a trident.

“Extra practices.” She tells him when he catches it easily in one hand and gives her a quizzical look. “Every Sunday. I’m not sharing a train ride home with your body in a bag of ice.”

A flurry of emotions pass over Finnick’s face - elation, terror, relief - before it settles on one: gratitude. “Thank you.” He tells her, clutching the trident close to him.  _ “Thank you,  _ Mags.”

“We’ll see if you’ll still be thanking me a few months from now.”

“I mean, I’ll either be thanking you or I’ll be dead.”

“We’ll see.” She repeats grimly. 

He nods, then gives her a confident grin.

“Either way, it will be an  _ awfully big adventure!” _

Mags smacks him over the head.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Mags keeps vigil at Finnick’s bedside while he sleeps. 

Down here in the Recovery center, it’s too far away to hear the cheering crowds. She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen them this rabid, and it makes her skin crawl.

On the screen, Finnick had seemed larger than life - some story book prince who charmed the cameras with his smile and fluttering eyelashes, even as he went on a record-breaking killing spree. 

Right now in the hospital bed, he looks like a child. 

She tentatively reaches for his face, smoothing back his hair. 

The way she used to with her own boy, when he was tiny and the pox hadn’t taken him yet.

Finnick’s eyes flutter open and he looks lost as he tries to reach through the haze of drugs for her.

“Mags?”

“I’m here,” She whispers, kissing his head. “I’m here,  _ mijo.  _ You’re going to live, and it will be an awfully big adventure.”

His hand stretches out, curling against her own.

_ “Thank you.”  _

In retrospect, not getting attached was always a fool’s errand. 

**Author's Note:**

> *ahem* Yes, I am deliberately writing around Finnick's Games.
> 
> Yes, you might see a Finnick's Games fic coming at some point.
> 
> No, I'm not going to promise anything.


End file.
